10 CONTRIBUTIONS TO WESTERN BoTANY No. 17 
and never overgrazed his 
our Government poison squad were allowed to do their own thinking 
instead of frantically chasing all over the country digging up weeds and 
testing them for poison they long ago would have suggested just what I am 
saying now. Any stockman knows that what plants their stock avoid are 
poisonous to them. And any stockman knows that under normal conditions 
stock are never poisoned if they have enough grass feed to eat. It is only 
when the range is sheeped out that they are forced in desperation to eat the 
harmful weeds that they get poisoned. 
It surely was a surprise to me to find the range all fenced and none 
of the vast wild area of two generations ago, when the great cattle barons 
used to trek a thousand miles across the range to market with their herds. 
Del Rio, some 400 miles down the Rio Grande in the wildest of the wild 
region where the bandts and Mexican guerillas used to hang out I imagined 
would be composed of a few shacks, a lot of saloons, and a horde of swag- 
gering cow-punchers. Instead I found a city of 4000 people, paved streets, 
electric lights and gas, and decent, well educated people and no cow-boys. 
Along the river where a person can wade across almost anywhere I saw no 
how he did it by saying that he always kept feed on hand for emergencies 
range. 
at the Hot Springs and the Indian Hot Springs. There was every con- 
venience at the Indian Hot Springs including electric light and hotel accom- 
modations. I saw only two Texas rangers, young men wearing revolvers 
e 
did not ask them if they were just from New York, but fellows wearing 
spats usually never lived in the region of overalls and high-heeled boots. I 
saw no young women smoking a pipe and only one flapper smoking a cig- 
aret, and I could find ten times as many right in Los Angeles. I did not see 
half as many flappers in all Texas as I would see in my own home town. 
I guess the only place now to find the wild and woolly people is in the 
story books. 
somewhat so that drainage areas were formed which for the most part 
or river, or occasionally as with the Pecos and Devil’s rivers forming box 
canons of short extent, but with these few exceptions the general surface was 
gentle in slope. In extreme western Texas there is little or no sod, and 
the prevailing vegetation is the mesquit or creosote bush or Chenopodiaceous 
